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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Advice for people that won’t watch a video but that still want to know about how unqualified Sarah Palin is
Know this:
Only two Vice Presidents in the history of the U.S. had less experience than Sarah Palin does now.
Exhibit A: Spiro T. Agnew, Republican Governor of Maryland, served as VP under Nixon. Should the McCain/Palin ticket be successful, Palin and Agnew will have spent the same amount of time as Governor. Also, by the way, Agnew was indicted before the end of his term.
Exhibit B: Chester A. Arthur, Civil Rights Lawyer and NY State Port Collector, served as VP under Garfield and then as President when Garfield was assassinated.
I will now officially lay off of Palin. For at least a week.
Advice for people who think Sarah Palin is qualified for VP
Watch this very impartial assessment:
Advice for people knitting with laceweight yarn
It’s a niche, fine.
At first, I really didn’t get the whole lace knitting thing. Honestly, I still don’t. But I have now knitted something with laceweight yarn, which is amost just as good.
Behold, the Glorious New Purple See Through Sweater:
I freaking love this thing. LOVE. The only problem, really, is that I HATED actually knitting it.
That lovely, light, thin alpaca yarn is SO soft and wonderful, it is just hell to knit with. So easy to drop a stitch. So difficult to tell the difference between a purl and a knit (wtf, man, I’ve been doing this for a while–that should not be hard!). It’s not just difficult to hide a mistake in a piece like this, it’s impossible.
Lucky for me, I haven’t looked too closely at it.
Oh, right, the advice. (You thought this was just an excuse to show off my new thing!)
Thing one: Don’t worry about inconsistencies in stitches. My sweater looked a mess before I blocked it. There was all manner of holes and misshapen stitches. All of the stitches were there (there’s no fix if that’s not the case), but man were they wonky. One good blocking and now all the holes are the same size, just as it should be!
Thing two: Don’t worry about the finishing. All of the advice that I found online about weaving in the ends amounted to: Avoid it at all costs. Well, that’s not useful with this kind of pattern, so I did some pretty standard weaving the ends into the cast-on/bind-off row, and it worked surprisingly well. If it starts unravelling in the next few wearings, I will definitely let you know.
Advice for people who want to understand the mortgage crisis
It’s 59 minutes out of your life, very well spent. Go listen to this episode of This American Life, where they talk to individuals on all levels of the ladder, trying to simultaneously explain and understand the mortgage crisis.
Advice for a first date
If things are going well enough for you to consider a second date, but you are not absolutely certain that the relationship can survive it, do not, I repeat, DO NOT talk about politics.
…as a side note, it occurs to me that I should probably confess here that thus far I find that I am unable to take my own good advice when it comes to dating. Learn from my mistakes. Someone should.
Advice that I stole from someone who is awesome
Don’t apologize for being awesome.
Advice for people who want to see the most beautiful bride ever
Go look at John Riedy’s pictures of my little sister.
Posted in Uncategorized
Advice for people who feel like they have to clean their plate
I imagine that the sentiment started with a scarcity of resources: “you better eat all your dinner because we don’t know when we’ll be able to buy more food.”
Or maybe, out of guilt: “finish your dinner, there are children starving in [insert developing nation here].”
Another likely scenario is an aversion to wastefulness: “you put that food on your plate, now you have to eat it because I’m not throwing it away.”
Especially in this day of Absolutely Ridiculous Portion Sizes in Restaurants, the last one resonates the most with me. Until I realized this very simple truth:
Waste in, waste out.
Allow me to explain. “Waste in” means that if I put more food in my body after I am already full, it is a waste. It is a waste because it will add extra resources that my body does not need and then will be forced to store. In layman’s terms: weight gain.
“Waste out” is the other side. If I don’t eat the food, it will be wasted and go directly into the garbage, without being at all useful to anyone.
However, at the point that all possible futures for what is still on your plate constitutes a waste, do you really want it going to your waist? (sorry ’bout that)
This leaves exactly two ways that the food still on your plate won’t end up being a waste. You could eat it when you are hungry again. That may work for some foods and some people, but in all honesty, I’m not a huge fan of leftovers. Not sure why, because I’m not an insane quality snob or anything, but I’ve just always preferred a good meal the first time around.
The other option, the one I employ as often as possible, is to give your restaurant leftovers to someone who needs a good meal. When I lived in Berkeley, I you could easily judge the authenticity of a pan-handler’s need by their reaction to offered leftovers. Of course, in order to pull this one off, you probably have to be living in something like a city and also be walking. Both of those things are good for you, too, by the way.
